


I've Got Ways of Making You Sing

by stitchy



Series: Bedazzled AUs [3]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: 1940s, Admittedly Sanitized Period Typical Homophobia, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Noir, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Brief Violence, Detective AU, Everybody Lives, Falling In Love, First Time, Getting Together, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:34:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24495103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchy/pseuds/stitchy
Summary: Tozier reads off the matchbook with a grin. “Edward Kaspbrak, private detective. ‘Private’. What’s that mean?”“It means I usually like to be the one to decide when and if the police are involved.”The look Eddie gets back for that remark is not the smirking enjoyment he’s coming to expect from their little back and forth. Tozier’s arrogant mask falters. “Does it mean if I told you something- something that’s not hurting anyone but me- you’ll keep it to yourself?”
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: Bedazzled AUs [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1772641
Comments: 81
Kudos: 331





	I've Got Ways of Making You Sing

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sympathy From The Devil](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23740204) by [stitchy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchy/pseuds/stitchy). 



> AN: This fic is a spin off from my Bedazzled AU “Sympathy From The Devil”. The world where Eddie is a detective and Richie is a club crooner is just one of several realities Eddie wishes up while trying to make some sense of what he wants from life. You don’t have to read it to understand this, at all! But it's fun, and that where this fic was sort of back-door-piloted. “I've Got Ways” stands alone as it’s own work, and while it does retread about 5k of “Sympathy”... this time... it gets spicy and there's no major character death :D

The office phone rings, but Eddie doesn’t pick up. It’ll just be his mother again, and there’s no making her understand, even though it was her rampant paranoia and suspicious nature that forged him into the sort of man who fit this line of work. All she sees is the undue strain of late nights that he prefers to the ones at home. When the phone goes silent again, he leaves it off the hook for a little while, so he can finish checking the classifieds, undisturbed.

Or so he thinks.

“Just like in the pictures,” a voice tsks. “I was preparing myself for disappointment, but you’re a real looker, aren’t ya?”

Eddie peels his eyes away from scanning the rag and sets them on the figure that just quietly stepped into his office. Dark obscures his face, and the man’s long shadow slices across the floor as light from the hallway spills in behind him.

“It’s my _job_ to look,” Eddie replies, without allowing a smile.

Eddie Kaspbrak is a private detective- it says so on the door. His business is to watch people. To know who they are, where they go, and what they want. Maybe he’s not used to being observed so closely in return, though.

“I must’ve seen you around The Capitol Club, but usually I don’t-“ The man steps into better light and pockets his coke-bottle glasses and then they both recognize each other better. 

Eddie’s been down to that local haunt to dig up dirt for clients, all right. They’ve met briefly a few times, running in the same circles, and he’s heard Big Mouth’s singing impressions while looking for the bottom of many a glass of gin. There are all sorts of tunes. French romance, for instance, or the latest Broadway smash as sung by Frankenstein or FDR, and even female impersonations so sweet, you’d swear it was Lady Day herself. It’s popular stuff.

“Richie ‘Big Mouth’ Tozier,” Eddie says evenly, concealing his surprise to see such a glamorous talent in his crummy little office. “Don’t suppose you’ve lived up to that name and landed yourself in some hot water?”

It’s hard for Tozier to look anything but dismayed, squinting like that. Now that he’s made his point, Eddie wonders that he doesn’t put his eyes back on, but- and he can already imagine Tozier putting on a voice of a vain ingenue if he suggested it. _Men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses._

“Big Mouth's just my act, I’m not a rat.”

“But you’re in trouble or else you wouldn’t be here.”

Tozier takes a step closer to his desk. "Bill Denbrough said you helped track down his kid brother with nothing to go on but a receipt for a raincoat.”

“I did.”

The hands plunged in Tozier’s pockets come out empty and twist in front of him. “I don’t have anything like that to give you, the police took it all.”

Eddie sits back and crosses his arms. “You’ve already been to the police?”

“That’s one way to put it.”

“What’s the other way?”

Tozier sways on the spot and sighs. “They pinched me a week ago.”

“I think you’d better start at the beginning. Sit down before you fall down.” Eddie folds aside his newspaper and replaces it with some loose leaf.

“You’re not gonna name your price first?”

Eddie smiles. “Might wanna raise it after what I hear.”

“And Bill called you a bleeding heart...” Tozier mutters.

He looks around for a nearby chair and heaps himself into it like a fur coat, legs crossed and an arm dangling over the back, which he’s deemed to be a side. A headful of bouncing curls are freed as he takes off his hat and balances it on his knee. To complete his languorous effect, he draws a silver cigarette case from his breast pocket.

“Got any matches? It’ll keep me awake.”

Eddie pulls out his desk drawer and flips him a book. “You can keep it. If I take your case, I’ll expense it.”

“If you don’t?” Tozier lifts a single brow over the flame that makes his eyes twinkle without his glasses on.

 _Appearance conscious_ , Eddie writes down, beginning his notes. He’d bet the farm this is a blackmail case. “If I don’t,” he says. “-I’ll enjoy imagining you out there somewhere, offering people a light from some free advertising.”

Tozier checks the cover and reads it off with a grin. “Edward Kaspbrak, private detective. _‘Private’_. What’s that mean?”

“It means I usually like to be the one to decide when and if the police are involved.”

The look Eddie gets back for that remark is not the smirking enjoyment he’s coming to expect from their little back and forth. Tozier’s arrogant mask falters. “Does it mean if I told you something- something that’s not hurting anyone but me- you’ll keep it to yourself?”

He’s not so sure about Tozier just yet, but speaking for himself, Eddie wouldn’t say he was a rat either. For every good, moral law, Lord knows there are ten rotten ones. “I’d prefer it that way,” he tells him honestly.

“Right.” Tozier mulls that over the slow inhale of his cigarette and blows out the smoke. “Well, this _is_ about being Big Mouth, I guess. I don’t know how else it would have happened. You’ve heard my act? Singing in funny voices. Accents. Making words up for special guests.”

Eddie nods to confirm.

“I suppose it started a joke. Or, I _thought_ it was a joke-”

“Aren’t you sure? You’re a comedian.”

There’s that flash of teeth again. Tozier fits his fingers into the dimples of the hat on his knee and spins it around. “The pay wasn’t a joke. Someone sent me a letter asking for me to telephone their uncle and sing him Happy Birthday like I was Louis Armstrong. For ten dollars.”

Eddie whistles. That’s what he’ll charge a man he doesn’t like for a day’s work he doesn’t want to do. “I’m in the wrong line of business.”

“You can say that again.”

“Did you do it?”

Tozier lifts the hat off his knee and spreads his arms wide. “Ten dollars already in my hand? I felt like singing anyway.”

“So far, so good. Then what?”

“There were a few more letters like that. I threw them all out after, but I started to get the idea they were from the same person pretty quick. An anonymous admirer from the Capitol.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Not long after I started there. Two or three years ago.”

Eddie starts to make a note. “Longer than that. It was ‘41 at least, before we went in on the war. I remember you did a song from _Road to Zanzibar_ that made me rush out and see the picture.”

 _Verever you are, you're near me  
_ _You dare me to be untrue  
_ _Vunny, each time I vall in love  
_ _It's alvays you_

“How’d you like it?”

“I was disappointed when Dracula wasn’t really in it. You owe me a quarter for the ticket. I’ll add that to your bill, too.”

Toziers grins and points with his cigarette. “If you’re such a long time devotee, Mr. Kaspbrak, maybe the letters are from you.”

“No,” Eddie says flat as table, to toy with him.

Tozier squirms. “No?”

“I’d ask for ‘Jolly Good Fellow’. Now, were these letters signed in any way? Handwritten? Typed?”

Tozier shakes his head. “Typed.”

Eddie doesn’t even make a note of that, it’s becoming so obvious. “Then there was a letter without money, I’ll bet.”

A shadow passes over Tozier’s face and he stalls with his cigarette again. “That one said I ought to call a man named- Cain? or Keene? I think it was Keene. No song. Just said that I should tell him his wife wouldn’t appreciate hearing about his unpaid gambling debt.”

Sometimes there’s no comfort in being right. Eddie watches the color drain from Tozier’s face and dreads asking, but he has to. “And what did the letter blackmail _you_ with, to do it?”

Tozier’s Big Mouth works, forming one word after another without speaking until he finally decides on an answer. “A lover,” he says weakly.

Eddie draws a breath. “Now, you tell me if I’ve got the right idea, here-”

As though the cloud of smoke might shroud him from further question, Tozier keeps puffing away. Other people’s _ideas_ can be dangerous. He starts trying to volunteer facts instead, to head Eddie off. “I didn’t keep up with it, all this time, if that’s what you’re thinking. I ended it. Didn’t change what was already done... But the letters didn’t stop. Lotta times there’d be money, too, to keep me feeling too guilty to tell anyone.” He chances a look at Eddie. “ _Call someone like an Italian. Call someone with a deep, drawn out voice. Call someone and tell them you’ll end their career if they don’t pay up._.. And I did.”

At this rate, it's a wonder he’s not still in police custody.

“Any chance that your lover and blackmailer are one in the same?”

For a moment, Tozier looks horrified, but recovers. “Not likely. Not with overseas postage,” he says carefully.

 _Foreign mail speeds?_ Eddie notes. You never know.

“How many of these letters were there?”

“Maybe two hundred or more over the years. Once the arrangement got going, I don’t think a week went by without one or two,” Tozier remembers. “Until I was arrested, anyway.”

“I take it they confiscated all of these letters as evidence?”

Tozier rolls his eyes. “Naturally. But I only had two or three lying around. Recent ones with names I thought I might be able to look up. The rest I got rid of. Burned them as quick as I got them.”

Eddie has Tozier put back on his glasses and write a list for him of every name he can remember and another of what kind of voices he was told to use. Mostly the accompanying threats were monetary, but a follow up call from the Grim Reaper wasn’t unheard of. He’ll have to look into those of the names that have a chance of being unique in a town like New York, and see if they’re at all related. Are they links in a chain, or a whole damn fence? Either way, if he can find and rattle one, more are sure to follow until he finds the hungry dog on the other end, doing all this barking.

While Eddie adds a few notes of his own, Tozier fiddles with his glasses, uncertain if he should take them off again. Distracted by the flash of the light in the lenses, Eddie keeps glancing at him. They don’t spoil Tozier's good looks as much as he thinks. They don’t spoil his looks at all. Eddie gives him a little smile as he sits back, and Tozier stops fussing.

“Do you know how you wound up getting fingered for this?” Eddie asks. He’s not convinced this isn’t a dirty cop to begin with. It can be a hell of a lot more profitable to squeeze someone than to lock them up.

“One of my calls- I made it from the club. I didn’t have time to find another phone. The poor sucker on the other end- a gambler- recognized Hanlon blowin’ horn in the background. One of his own songs. He knew right where to send the police, and there weren’t any other fellas working that night with access to the phone in the backstage office. If he hadn’t been bumped off while I was busy being in holding, I don’t think they woulda let me go.” Tozier ashes his cigarette vindictively. “They thought if I turned up dead _next_... they wouldn’t mind so much and they’d have a little more to go on.”

Eddie looks over his notes and Tozier’s list, looking for any pattern that might stand out to him. There are a few notions he’d like to try on and see how they fit.

“So you didn't tell the cops any of these names?”

Tozier shakes his head. “No. I let them talk themselves into their own boneheaded theory.”

“Did you lie?”

“I said I did it for a gambling debt, same as the other guy, not that I was being blackmailed.”

Eddie rubs his eyes in disbelief. “Definitely stop volunteering crimes to the police, you numbskull.”

“They worked me over for _hours_!” Tozier defends himself. “But don’t worry, I’m not going back to them.”

“Why on earth would you?” Eddie boggles. He was luckier than the devil to get away the first time. Still, he can’t help but feel a swell in his chest that he’d been entrusted over them.

Without his smoking to keep him going, Tozier starts harassing his hat again. He pinches the brim and turns it in his hands. “There was another letter, after the arrest. At first I thought the gig was over. That I was too hot to keep using, and like that- _spider,”_ he spits, “-knew everything else, he’d know that, too.”

“Did you destroy it? What’d it say?”

The rotation of the hat in Tozier’s hands comes to a halt.

“‘No more stupid mistakes or else next time I’ll make sure the police have something to charge you for’. That was all. No instructions for Big Mouth,” he tells Eddie. He looks pale as the grave again. “I’ve been- I’ve been afraid to go home or sleep, since. The letters- well, obviously he knows where I live if he has my address, right? I’ve barely left the club except to come here, in case someone else the police can connect to me turns up _dead_ and I don’t have an alibi.”

Tozier was arrested a week ago, Eddie realizes. Assuming it took a day or two for his blackmailer to find out and send a letter- “When’s the last time you _slept?”_

“When’s the last time it rained?” Tozier winces.

“Two nights ago.”

“That’s when Bill kicked me out for driving him crazy while he’s tryin’ to write. I slept two or three hours backstage last night before the owner found me... I think? Maybe that was the same night?”

Eddie gets up from his desk and pulls his coat off the rack. “I’ll take you home.”

Tozier startles. “But if-“

“I’ll make sure no one strangles you in your sleep,” Eddie promises. “Dead clients don’t pay, you know.”

Eddie's always happy for a night off from his mother, so it's really no skin off his nose. And then when Tozier's not exhausted to the point of paranoia, he’ll explain to him why he’s more use to this blackmailer alive and out of custody. Meanwhile, Eddie can check if Tozier received any more letters while avoiding home. 

Tozier looks up at him wide eyed. “You’ll take my case?”

Eddie puts on his hat and then plucks Tozier’s out of his hands and drops it on his head, too. “Come on, Mr. Tozier.”

He lets out a gust of relief. “You’re gonna be a guest in my home- Richie, please,” he reintroduces himself, getting to his feet.

“Richie,” Eddie places a hand at his back. “Go get some sleep so I don’t feel like a heel taking your money while you’re half out of your mind.”

At his touch, Tozier- _Richie_ falls into step. “Oh, I’m _always_ half out of my mind. Ask anyone.”

“No thanks. That would mean admitting that I know you. I’ve already got a reputation as a sap, apparently. I can’t afford people thinking I’m a lunatic by association.”

Despite everything weighing on him, Richie laughs, and Eddie thinks it might just be the best sound that Big Mouth makes.

When they get out to the street they stumble along toward the Hudson, Richie in his sleep-deprived state, Eddie with his habitual limp. He does his best to mask it and give an air of capability, but it’s probably moot. Richie’s humming to himself to keep awake, about the beach at Bali-Bali and the blue Miami shore; _I don’t recall your name, but won't you tell me, just the same- where have we met before?_ Eddie knows he’s been made.

“It was the party for the Hanscoms,” he supplies.

“Oh!” Richie slaps a palm to his forehead.

_“-the first time.”_

“Did Ben marry that nice girl more than once?”

“No, but we’ve _met_ more than once. You never recognize me,” Eddie frowns.

Richie turns and raises a brow over his glasses and points in explanation. “I never wear these at the club, and a good thing too- I’m like a horse with blinders. If I saw a mean mug like yours in the crowd I’d spook right off the stage, break my leg, and they'd have to put me down.”

 _"Horse,"_ Eddie snorts. “An ass, is more like it.”

  
-

  
Once they’re inside Richie pulls the chain for the main light, revealing a surprisingly bare apartment. With such a flamboyant personality, a steady income from the club and a fortune of ill gotten gains besides, Eddie expected something a little more cluttered. This could be the retreat for a monk, or an exile- some sort of man denied even simple pleasures.

“Huh...”

“What?”

Eddie ducks the still swinging chain and takes a look around at the empty walls for any sign to the contrary. “I just thought maybe...”

“I’d be living like a Rockefeller?”

“Well, I mean- for ten dollars a birthday party!”

Richie kicks off his shoes by the door and then toes at the edge of a rug until it flips away. There’s a floorboard beneath with no nails in it that rattles when he gives it a tap. “I put it in the First National Plank of New York. I’m saving up for my own club, someday.”

“You’re lucky the police didn’t find it.”

“I think it helped that I left the _really_ incriminating stuff right out in the open.” Richie crouches down to pry his stash out and then hands it to Eddie. “You can check the cash for clues if you think it’ll help,” he yawns.

Eddie weighs the box in his hands. Richie must really be tired if he’s not thinking better of handing a relative stranger his life savings. “I could rob you,” he points out.

Richie yawns again and starts lumbering away to the back room. “Just be quiet about it, will ya?”

While Richie sleeps off his waking nightmare, Eddie takes a more thorough look around. There’s nothing unexpected in the bathroom, since a place like this almost never has good hot water. The kitchen seems to be more active than the sitting room, at least. During the day it must have nice light, with its south facing window. There’s a private telephone there (no one has cut into it’s circuit, he’s checked) that’s really the crown jewel of the whole place, the one luxury aside from a pile of records. To play those, there’s an immaculately kept turntable, though for some reason it’s located by the sink where Eddie sees the traces of java grounds. Since the cupboard is bare but for a half loaf of bread and some cheese and beers in the ice box, that’s probably the most cooking that happens here, while Richie subsists on meals from the club. There are venetian blinds but no curtains or spare pillows on the low, lumpy couch, no ‘woman’s touch’, nor any other kind of soft effect in the apartment until Eddie peeks through the half open door of the bedroom. Too exhausted to properly turn in, Richie fell asleep on top of the covers, still in his duds with his glasses half dislodged onto the pillow. It makes Eddie's heart pull.

For a while he watches the time tick by and thinks of his mother. As long as he shows up in time for breakfast, he can usually convince her he came home for the night. There’s no way that’s happening though, with the state Richie was in. He’ll be out until lunch at least, and then Eddie will still want some time with him while he’s fresh, besides. He’ll be lucky to make it back for dinner, but either way, there’ll be hell to pay.

He gets a few winks on the couch himself, and although he must not fall asleep until a good two hours after Richie, he’s still awake before him, with the opportunity to do a little brain work. Eventually, Richie reemerges from bed, having slept half a day. A pleasing hum teases his arrival, weaving from bedroom, to bathroom, to hall, and then blends into a chuckle as he swans into the kitchen where Eddie sits at the table. 

“I thought you might have been a dream,” Richie says.

“Let me know when you rule out ‘hallucination’.”

“Hmm. I’ll need coffee for that.”

While he’s turned away, Eddie lets his gaze linger. The pomade in Richie’s hair has been brushed out, leaving his curls feathery, and his earlier pallor has been replaced by the blush of a hearty rest. With no audience to impress but Eddie, he wears his glasses so he can navigate the hot plate without scalding himself. A comfortable sight, indeed.

After he starts that boiling, Richie pulls the sash of his pearl gray dressing robe tight and glides over to Eddie, reading the paper he retrieved at the door this morning. He peeks at the headlines, hanging over Eddie like a garland at a threshold, smelling honeyed, and blooming with a smile. It makes Eddie want to hold his breath to keep the sweetness inside.

“Did I viciously murder anyone while I was out?” Richie inquires.

Eddie folds back to the obituaries. “Nope. How’d you sleep?”

Richie’s fingers travel down the page until he gets to the T’s absent of a Tozier. “Aha!” He taps it. “Above ground, it turns out. Any thoughts on how we might keep it that way?”

“A few.” Eddie lays down the paper and twists his chair to face the other, which Richie happily takes as an invitation to sit with him. “First off, no more placing calls from here or the club- but when you get a letter, do what she says. Then bring it to me as soon as you can.”

Richie’s brow makes the expected crease. “She?” he asks. “What makes you so sure it's a broad?”

“Were you ever asked to make one of your calls in a woman’s voice?” This is the most glaring commonality from the lists they made last night.

“No, now that I think about it.” The confused lines in Richie’s forehead multiply.

“I think that’s what she wants you for, your spider,” says Eddie. He can’t help but be a little self-satisfied with the amazed way Richie watches him. “I think her blackmail empire’s too difficult to enforce without the perception of brute strength.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t notice-“

The pot of water starts to rattle loudly, boiling on the hot plate.

“ _Finally_.” Richie holds up a finger to excuse himself and hops to his feet. “You want some?”

Eddie follows him to the counter, keeping close while Richie makes his brew. “Sure. But- it’s just a hunch. Don’t lull yourself into a false sense of security-“

“I’m on tiptoes and tenterhooks,” Richie promises. He twists toward Eddie, indeed a few inches taller than before. “I suspect _everyone_. What was your excuse again, Mr. Kaspbrak?”

“Better taste in music,” Eddie grins up at him. “But I really think it's a woman. You said you thought it was an admirer at first-“

Richie quickly looks away and fusses with their coffee, pouring out two cups for them both. “Who can keep track of every stagedoor Johnny?” He laughs, a bit unnaturally. “Cream or sugar?”

“No, thank you.”

Truth be told, he doesn’t want the coffee at all, not at this hour, but Eddie waits to be handed his cup before pressing on. He won’t sneak up on Richie from behind. He has to look him in the eye so that Richie knows he doesn’t mean any harm. When Richie faces him again, he has the nervous edge of a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

“What woman knows about your lovers?” Eddie asks quietly, because it must be asked.

“...I only mentioned the one.” Worried eyes flicker to meet Eddie over the rim of Richie’s own cup.

“But they’re all alike, aren’t they- and she would know _how_ ,” Eddie supposes. “Maybe a jilted wife?”

Richie gestures at the surrounding empty apartment. “I don’t have a wife.”

Eddie lets Richie hold that line while they sip their drink quietly. The next time Richie lowers his cup, Eddie covers it from the top, takes it and puts it aside, slowly. As the distraction is pulled away, Richie’s spine straightens, preparing for fight or flight.

“But did _he_? He went to war, didn’t he?”

“Who?” Richie asks superfluously. “And who didn’t?!”

“You and me, for a start,” Eddie reminds him. Obviously Richie would have 4F’ed out of a draft physical with his wretched eyesight as quickly as Eddie with his bum lungs and lingering paresis. “Maybe there wasn’t enough money to go around at home with him gone, and she needed a side business?”

Finally Richie stops trying to talk around it and he fixes Eddie with a wary look. Eddie can see how badly Richie wants to trust him. He’s been trying to, all this time. “No. No, never with a married man,” he admits. “I’d rather be alone _._ ”

“Because you want to be the only one who’s wanted,” Eddie says certainly. It’s his job to see what other people want, even if it’s taken a few years to sort out the same for himself. Even then, it had to walk into his office and practically sit in his lap for Eddie to be ready to take the chance. “Now who’s the bleeding heart?”

Richie shakes his anxious head. “You won’t quit, will you?”

Eddie reaches to still him, fitting a hand to Richie’s jaw and shaking his own head. “I couldn’t.” He brushes his thumb at the soft ridge of cheek just under his glasses. Poor thing was less afraid to leave his life savings in Eddie’s hands than to admit he loved other men. But even with his poor sight, can’t Richie see there’s nothing to fear? Not from him.

Carefully, slowly, Richie unguards himself. His lips part, his eyes drift to Eddie’s mouth, and he starts to lean in. But not without offering one last chance to bail. “But, for your reputation- you wouldn’t want to be seen-”

“-Don’t tell me what I want, _I’ll_ tell you what I want,” Eddie chuckles. “I want you _.”_

Then before he can lose his nerve, Eddie moves to kiss him. There’s a quick sip of surprise- maybe they both believed they’d go back and forth, teasing forever- but then Richie softens into it. He’s warm lipped and eager, opening his mouth to Eddie and sharing his delicious sigh. He kisses unhurriedly, so opposed to the way he speaks- but it is a language. _Oh, please, yes_ , says his kiss. _I want you, too._ Richie’s hands slip to Eddie’s back, gathering him in like a bushel, so that even when their mouths break apart they’re still together.

“I’ve wanted to do that a long time,” Eddie tells him.

“Since I came to your little rat trap of an office?”

Eddie huffs and shakes his head. “You know since when, you S.O.B.”

Instead of laughing or slugging back, Richie goes very quiet for a moment, so quiet, Eddie could swear he can hear the past and a ghost of a melody. Richie looks like he can hear it, too.

“I wish I’d come to you sooner,” he says, searching Eddie’s face like he’s still a little suspicious of hallucination. “Years ago.”

“My rates were better then,” Eddie grins.

“I didn’t want to make things worse,” Richie tells him. “I don’t want anyone else to be in danger ‘cause I’m too stupid not to take a wooden nickle. Look how many people I already-“

“You were _forced_ to,” Eddie cuts in.

“What’s to say one of them doesn’t come do me in?” Richie asks, slightly panicked. “They’d have the right!”

“They don’t have the resources to find you, kid.”

“-And The Spider?”

Eddie shushes him. “I kept you in the clear last night, didn’t I?”

That makes Richie pause. “Yeah?”

“I’ll keep you there.” Eddie grips him by the chin. “I’m gonna take care of this. Take care of you, too.” He draws Richie down into another kiss.

He hopes it’s not just that Richie is grateful for the help and generous in his affection- but would that be the worst thing? A passing comfort for two, who would otherwise have taken refuge in loneliness.

Instead of turning it in on himself, Richie worries Eddie’s lip with fretful bites. They trade tender nips that stretch into longer, more exploring kisses. Like their tongues, Richie’s solid, sensational body pushes against his. Eddie pushes back, cornering him into the shelter between the kitchen counter and the door. When his hand falls from Richie’s chin to his chest, it comes to land half on the satin of his robe and half on his skin, and Eddie knows which is more tempting. There’s no surprise or resistance as he spreads his fingers across Richie’s heated flesh, only an encouraging moan that morphs into a leftover yawn.

“Obviously I’m boring you,” Eddie teases as he kisses Richie’s neck. “If you’re still tired-“

“Tired as tombstones. I’m exhausted. I’m a _wreck_ ,” Richie gushes. He lets go of Eddie’s waist and starts rending apart the knot at his own. “Maybe I should go back to bed.”

It all tilts then, like tossing a boulder on a scale- Eddie’s desire outweighed by his inexperience. Richie’s heavy lidded eyes, his own audible, heavy breathing, the weighty feeling coiling in his belly. 

_Holy Mary._

He wants Richie. He’s watched him for a very long time, up on that stage, out of reach. He wants to better know Richie and for him to bare himself and pull back that curtain- but he doesn’t quite know how to act, once it's parted. What’s his cue? Though he won’t dare look down, he cups at the naked hips that angle at him, insisting he take hold.

“And what should _I_ do?” he asks. 

The rest of Richie follows his hips and he rolls up against him from shoulder to thigh. He wraps at Eddie’s neck and kisses just in front of his ear. “Come to bed with me,” he says.

“And then?” If the case is Eddie’s arena- clearly the bed is Richie’s.

Richie hangs back to look at him, a curious but delighted expression drawing his brow into a peak. “Well, Mister Detective,“ he vamps in a pitch perfect Mae West. “-if ya look real careful I’m sure you’ll finda clue.”

He kisses Eddie once more and then slips past him. His gray robe billows along behind as he strides back toward the bedroom, inevitable as a storm cloud on the horizon. Eddie is struck by flashes of his white backside. Lightning had always excited him, despite the danger.

Jumping to action, he hurries after Richie, down the hall, through the door and stops just as abruptly in the cramped bedroom. He apologizes, having nearly pushed Richie down onto the tiny, chenille covered bed- but that seems to have been his plan anyway.

“Don’t be such a gentleman,” Richie smirks. He shrugs out of his dressing gown and sits in the untidy pool of it, naked as a jaybird.

“Oh, Christ,” Eddie swears, finally letting his gaze drop below Richie’s collar bone. The well formed brawn of him is all on display, now. Solid chest and stomach, rising and falling as he breathes, dusted in fine dark hair, trailing down... _“Shit.”_

“That’s more like it,” Richie chuckles. He pulls Eddie to stand between his open knees and sets to work on his fly.

With a bracing gulp, Eddie glances down to the plump cock that nests at the meeting of Richie’s strong thighs. It’s just beginning to curve up in interest, and God help him, it’s gorgeous. Every part of him is built like a cathedral, smooth and sturdy arches where Eddie is pokey and crumbling.

 _Shit shit shit._ He didn’t think of this- how he’s fooling Richie, fooling himself. He’d settled into the lie for so long, telling himself that the simmering heat he felt looking at other men was envy for their health and not desire, _so long_ \- yet now that he’d willingly flipped the switch he’d forgotten what a disappointment he is in comparison.

“You’re incredible,” Eddie laments aloud. He rests his hands on Richie’s wide shoulders, confirming their might as they move under his touch. “You’re goddamned perfect.”

He’s not like that and can never be, not after the sickness that will never really be through with him. One leg, too lean and knobby, like it never made it out of the Depression. Still pocked with scars from a childhood brace, still a little bowlegged- signs of the weakness waiting under the surface for it’s return. Richie, who won’t wear glasses publicly, will see any second now when he unbuttons Eddie’s trousers. He’ll see and realize his mistake.

“I know I just said don’t be a gentleman, but I didn’t mean make me do _all_ the work,” Richie teases, snapping at Eddie’s suspenders. He starts to stand so he can better pull them down from Eddie’s shoulders, but Eddie stops him in place.

“Wait, I’m sorry,” he stammers. “I’m- _I don’t-“_

Richie’s face drops and he removes his hands. “If you don’t want me to...“

“No! I want to. I want _you._ I just haven’t done this so much, is all. Not at all, in fact, and- and I’m... not so good looking.”

Richie actually bursts out laughing. “ _You,_ not good looking! Baby Bogart with none of the jowls and better teeth? You’re the handsomest fella I’ve ever had the pleasure of not fucking yet- if you’ll pardon my French.”

“Teeth?” Of everything Richie just said, that’s where Eddie fixates, bizarrely. He can still feel their earlier, nibbling kisses on his lip.

“What can I say? When I see something so Eddie-ble I can’t resist using my teeth,” Richie grins, sharkily. “Well. Maybe not for _everything.”_ His eyes flash even wider behind the magnifying effect of his glasses.

“No? Like what?” Eddie licks the bottom edge of his front teeth, now suddenly very conscious of them. He only just learned there’s a very, very right way to use them, he’s not looking to stumble into a wrong one.

Richie’s fingers curl into Eddie’s pockets again. He tugs Eddie against the edge of the bed, deeper into the warm surrounding of his legs and arms. “Take your slacks off already, and I’ll show you.”

 _Yes._ Eddie’s hands fly to his suspenders, but he pauses a moment. “I had polio,“ he blurts in warning.

He’s so used to being told to _Please, take a seat, then_ , or to use a cane, or _Stay home with Mother,_ as though he can’t determine how he's feeling for himself- so he braces for Richie to do likewise. For him to act like he’s already shattered glass.

But the grip on his hip doesn’t alter. Richie’s brow knits in the middle and he frowns, but not in surprise or horror. “Are you hurting?” he asks gently.

“Not right now, not especially.” At the moment, the weakness in Eddie’s knees is otherwise explained.

“Then I don’t care,” he promises. The look on Richie’s face is a mirror of Eddie’s earlier. _Trust me, there’s nothing to fear from me, either._

The worry of being swept into a dustpan and discarded evaporates.

Eddie quickly shucks his shoes, then his trousers, not minding Richie’s steady hands on him as he steps out. It’s eagerness, not unasked assistance. He holds his breath as Richie’s touch skates off the material of his shorts and down the length of his legs. He doesn’t shy from Eddie’s scrawny half any different than his good leg, stroking the muscle, or lack of it, with his broad and reverent palms.

“M’glad you let me look, Eds,” he says, as soft as the way Eddie feels at this express departure from ‘Mr. Kaspbrak’, directly to a pet name. “But sorry to say, I’ve seen freakier.” He grins up at Eddie. “I was with the circus, you know. Shoveling elephant shit and hobnobbing at the hippodrome.”

“You were _not,”_ Eddie chuckles.

Richie’s eyes narrow and his smile curls devilishly. “How do you know?”

“Your hands are too soft, you’ve never made a living mucking anything but torch songs.”

They both laugh, and Richie’s tender touch travels up and over his backside, setting Eddie aflame. “Hey now, I thought you were a fan of Big Mouth?” he teases.

That Big Mouth, drawing nearer. Big hands wrapped at Eddie’s waist, fixing him in place. Not that he’d want to be anywhere else. He inhales sharp, as the heat of Richie’s breath permeates the front of his shorts. He presses into it on instinct- and then when Richie’s mouth moans wider, on purpose.

“ _Yeah,”_ Eddie sighs.

“Well you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Richie puffs against him.

“Huh?”

Next thing Eddie knows, Richie is pulling down his shorts and bending low so he can kiss the bare flesh of his shrunken thigh. He drags his open jaw back up, all the way to Eddie’s stomach, teeth and wet, hot lip drawing a stinging line that would gut him if it were a blade. Regrettably, his face and hands disappear in Eddie’s shirttails.

“Let me take this off,” Eddie mutters, unbuttoning. _Let me see._

While he does, Richie keeps exploring, skittering his fingertips up his abdomen and down his thighs again in a light way that makes Eddie crazy, wishing he’d take a firmer hold somewhere already. Then he does.

“This tonsil tickler ever been sucked before?” he asks, Eddie’s cock in hand.

Eddie sputters. “This- _what_ \- no??”

He watches in shock as Richie suddenly fits the head of him into his mouth with a gusto Eddie reserves for heaping spoonfuls of Royal pudding. How could Richie want to-

“ _Oh_ , oh God.”

Without practical experience, Eddie has constructed a tapestry of guess work at what men like them did together, but somehow he hadn’t expected _this._ It’s odd and vulnerable and now he knows what Richie meant about teeth, but it’s _elating_ too. He watches as Richie fills his mouth with more and more of him as he gets harder. Eddie’s never so much as stuck his finger in someone else’s ear, it was so drilled into him how filthy other people were, how filthy _he_ was, infected and sickly. Mother always held that he shouldn’t worry his head about all that nasty sex business since he was too frail to marry, too undesirable. Richie looks up and locks Eddie in his gaze and moans around him, banishing all of that.

“Richie,” he breathes. “You have to let me-“

“Mmm?” Richie rumbles, sending a spike of pleasure through him that steals his ability to form a sentence.

“Oh, let me, let me,” he pleads, digging his fingers into Richie’s hair.

 _You have to let me do this for you._ He has to let Eddie touch him and make all the bad things people have told him about himself disappear. He has let Eddie into more of him, and he’ll let Richie in, too. They don’t have to be scared and alone anymore. He won’t exploit Richie, or make him feel like he has to put on a show to have a purpose, or kick him out in the rain no matter how big a smart alec he can be. Let him have his broken, messy parts, and they’ll match Eddie’s.

“-Let me love you,” he tells Richie. He isn’t asking. He _would_ , he’s a professional at phrasing a leading question- but he knows he’s not going to have a choice, either way. The storm cloud is coming, there’ll be trouble when he gets home to Mother, and he’s going to love Richie with all his heart.

No sooner does Richie pull off of him to speak, Eddie bends and stoppers him with a kiss. He follows Richie’s sort of diagonal scramble into the bed, lest they go crashing over the other side. It’s so narrow, there’s nowhere to be but on top of him, touching him everywhere. Richie’s long arms wind tight around him, trapping their already excited bodies close together where they can work themselves into even more of a frenzy. Eddie swears and squirms as they kiss, bombarded by the novel thrill of having what little satisfaction he gets from his body caused by someone else. Is it always this good, when you share it? Or is it because Richie has had lovers before, and knows what to do? _No,_ Eddie thinks. Because he has no idea what _he’s_ doing and still Richie’s breath hitches and he hisses _Eds, Eds, yesss_ every time he pushes their cocks together. It’s the two of them together that’s special. Must be.

Eddie stops kissing Richie’s mouth, and only pauses to nibble at his neck for a moment before resuming elsewhere. As soon as Richie realizes what he’s doing, he shuffles backward, to sit up and give Eddie more room at the foot of the bed. He watches, rapt, as Eddie kisses his swollen length and experiments with rolling back the skin that sheaths his purpling head.

“You’re staring again,” Eddie notes. He returns the favor as he tests out using his tongue, too.

“Can you blame me wanting to get an eyeful for once?” Richie asks. With both hands, he mimes a telescope, pointed at Eddie. “I spend all my- _oh my God_ \- time in a blur, squinting through cabaret lights.”

Eddie hadn’t thought of it like that, but at the moment he’s struggling to imagine anything happening outside of this bed, let alone the apartment.

“You want to see me?” he says. When he glances at his misshapen lap, kneeling between Richie’s more pleasing legs, he burns where the path of his hands had not wavered.

Richie drops his telescope. “For cryin’ out loud- yeah! _Of course._ I am not counting the flowers on the fucking wallpaper, right now! I wanna see you smile! I wanna see you laugh! And I _definitely_ wanna watch you repaint my barber pole with your tongue.”

Eddie obliges him with the first two items off his list. _“Trash Mouth_ is more like it,” he snickers. That's what his mother would call that kind of talk.

“Maybe when I have my own club, that kinda act’ll fly.”

He can’t imagine- Richie on stage, even more unchained and riotous than usual. _But watch this!_ Eddie lowers his mouth to finally stuff Richie in it, and it’s _his_ show, now. He watches Richie watch him, slack jawed and a little sweaty from rolling around the bed together. He works his lips and tongue at him like Richie had done, and watches him twitch when he gets the trick of it just right. Of course it's hard breathing through his nose like this, and his lungs burn like he’s running- but he doesn’t mind or fear it. Not when Richie is huffing and puffing just the same, threatening to dislodge Eddie with how frantically his hips buck.

“ _Ah_ , Eddie, like that. Hhha! Like that and I’ll- _oh_ _not yet, not yet_ ,” he whines. He pats Eddie’s shoulder to stop him. “Wait...”

He draws off of Richie’s demanding cock, hotter in his hand than a skillet forgotten on the fire. “S’wrong?” he slurs.

Richie reaches for him, prying under his arms to bring Eddie back up to the top of the bed all the sooner. “I want to come with you,” he insists. “I want you up here. Come here.” As soon as he can reach, he starts kissing Eddie again, yet twists in a way that would seem counterproductive. “Up behind me,” he tells Eddie, pulling him and shifting. He lays on his side and wriggles his bottom into the bend of Eddie’s body.

It’s all happening a little too fast for Eddie to process. Still, he fits a hand at the dip below Richie’s rib cage and tugs closer instinctively, slotting himself right up against the swell of his backside. He smells the sweetness of him and presses his cheek to it.

“You’re so soft,” he kisses to the back of Richie’s shoulder. He snakes his other arm under Richie too, holding him close. “So warm."

“‘Cause I got the hots for ya.” Richie turns his head over his shoulder to be sure Eddie catches his smirk.

Somehow his audacity only makes Eddie fonder. “Fat head” he scoffs. 

“Oh sure, like you of all people can resist a cheap joke.”

Richie keeps turning the upper half of his body until he can kiss Eddie again. He must have some back bone- if Eddie tried that he’d be laid up for a week. Maybe he should try it, here in this bed, so he’ll have an excuse not to leave. Richie can be his living hot water bottle, slipped in beneath the sheets.

As they kiss Eddie relaxes about the gymnastics and starts rubbing the hardness of his cock into Richie’s well cushioned rear. He doubts he could catch up with him like this, like he asked, but he’s bound and determined to try. He moves to a rhythm set by the wet, repeated sound of their lips meeting and parting. It’s good to a point, but not quite constant enough. When he breaks pace with a frustrated grunt Richie twists to face away again.

“Stick it between my legs,” he says pushing back into him, “-then fuck them.”

 _“Yeah,”_ Eddie agrees quickly. He knocks his forehead to Richie’s back and looks down to see what he’s doing, grabbing his cock and aiming himself into the valley of those sturdy thighs he so admires. 

_“En garde!”_ Richie chuckles at the stab.

Then there’s a clench and Eddie’s stomach somersaults and his eyes slam shut. “ _Uhn_ , Rich-”

There’s the inviting, all enveloping feeling he’s been chasing. It’s nearly as tight as a hand and hot as a mouth, though obviously not so wet. It’s like velvet, the clutch of him. Soft and fuzzy. Something you want to wear out all evening- or midday as the case may be.

“You like that, huh?” Richie laughs. “Next time I’ll let you really have me with that ass opener of yours.”

_Next time._

“Oh hell, Richie-“

“Just like this, but even better.”

“-Better?” Eddie repeats, sounding out the impossible. “You already feel _so fucking good.”_

Richie giggles at his profanity like it's a personal victory. “I sure will with your cock in me.”

Eddie’s eyes sting, and the springs of the bed squeak like a whole flock of birds. He can’t remember consciously starting to move again, but when he opens his eyes there’s no denying the fact that he’s rocking Richie’s body with the force of his own. He might shove Richie out of this little bed entirely if he didn’t have such an ironclad hold on him. They smack together in happy grunts, each goaded louder and louder by the other, and he finds Richie’s cock, bobbing in front of him as they move, weeping and waiting for him.

The slippery slick feeling of it in his hand makes the same sensation in his stomach bubble over like a percolator, and Eddie can barely contain it. “I’m _-_ are you sure, _uhuhhgod,_ you don’t mind?” But before Richie can answer he thrusts once more and starts spending himself between his legs in unstoppable spurts. “I’m coming, _fuck_ , m’sorry Richie-“

“Eddie,” Richie whimpers, not breaking their rhythm. “Paint me up life a fence. Slap a sign on me. _Private Detective Property.”_

 _“Hnngyeah-”_ Eddie’s head swirls in a rush of sensitivity and affection so powerful he has to bury his face in between Richie’s shoulder blades to block out the light for a minute. “You’re _ridiculous_ and _filthy_ and I love it,” he confesses in a pant. “Isn’t that awful?”

“Nuh uh.” Richie flops onto his back with an arm strewn overhead and looks up at Eddie with those hungry eyes, again. He drags Eddie down to him for a kiss, then speaks against his lips as solemnly as if he’s swearing on a Bible. “Love me as hard as you want.”

Eddie swallows the thick feeling in his throat and kisses him back. “I will.” He then renews his grip and strokes Richie agonizingly slow. “That good?”

Richie groans a laugh. “Harder than that! Ah, _hah-_ that’s, that’s perfect, Eds. You’re gonna make me- _ah!”_

He makes sounds even better than his laugh while Eddie finishes him off, and Eddie knows now, that when he shuts his eyes it can only be for something _very_ good. He shivers and spills across his stomach in messy streaks that he barely registers, in favor of continuing to kiss. Eddie tries to edge away twice, but Richie keeps reeling him back in.

“Don’t go yet...”

“Mmmf! I’m just going to clean you up!”

“Oh,” Richie says, like he didn’t know Eddie wouldn’t leave as soon as they were through. Like other lovers had. He relaxes then, his entire body a display of unguarded happiness. Even though he’s disgusting, covered in both their spunk, his contented presence has a sort of rosy glow that is very difficult to abandon. Who would dare?

Eddie kisses him in reassurance. “Unless you’d rather drip yourself to the bathroom.”

“Mm, no,” Richie hums. “Spoil me rotten.”

“Too late for that,” Eddie smirks. “It’s a wonder this place isn’t crawling with flies.”

He sits up and finds his shorts on the floor before heading to get a washcloth, which takes three minutes at most, but much too long when there’s someone so sweet and spoilable waiting in bed for him.

“Your hot water takes forever,” he apologizes when he returns.

“Oh, you’re still here?” Richie wrinkles his nose at Eddie. “I thought you shimmied out the window on the gutter...”

Eddie slops the wet rag at him. “Punk.”

Too proud to deny it, Richie just giggles and makes room for Eddie to sit at the edge of the bed and mop his belly clean. Being a rotten man, he offers no help other than to drop his legs open, allowing Eddie access to his ticklish undercarriage, too. He sucks a breath and rolls his hips lasciviously. 

“I meant what I said about a ‘next time’,” he tells Eddie. “I want you again.”

Eddie is one lucky duck. “Yeah?”

“Soitently!” Richie grins. “And again and again and again...”

Eddie clears his throat. “I think I’ll need a nap, somewhere in the middle of all that.”

“In that case...” Richie shuffles back to invite him into bed.

They lay in each other’s arms for a while, sometimes talking and kissing, sometimes dozing. Eddie thinks maybe they’re done at one point when Richie leaves for the bathroom, but he comes back with toast for a late lunch, his own slice hanging from his teeth like a dog.

“What time is it?” Richie asks sometime after, when the light coming through the blinds changes yet again. “Hell, what _year_ is it?”

"1989, I think,” Eddie chuckles. “Come here, kid.” Richie curls in closer against his chest and then it’s easier to hook his arm around and read his watch. “Four o’clock.”

Richie groans. “I have to get to the club. Can I call your office later?”

“You’ll have to be careful what you say,” Eddie reminds him. “Don’t do any more Big Mouth calls here or at the club. You don’t know the police aren’t listening.” Sure, he checked that the phone was clean now, but that can always change.

“Well, sure. But just to say goodnight to my fella?” grins Richie. “Unless you’d want to come and see me in person...”

Eddie shivers at the enticing hand that strokes his back. Much as he would like to... “I do have a case to work, you know.”

“I know,” Richie dots him with a grateful kiss.

“Call me.”

“I’m _gonna,”_ Richie boasts.

“You _better,”_ Eddie prods him in the gut.

Richie rolls them in the bed one last time, pushing to be on top of Eddie. He flattens himself like a pancake at the top of a shortstack and laughs his buttery laugh. “Only way you could stop me is if you held me down.”

Eddie grins up at him. “Then you wouldn’t need to call me at all.”

“You and your detective logic mumbo jumbo.” He kisses Eddie soundly, like he’s making up for later. He hums a happy, directionless tune into it and then trails off in a sigh.

Eddie hates to ruin the moment, but keeping Richie safe so there can be more in the future is more important.

“We shouldn’t be seen together at the club too often, or coming and going from here,” he says, regretfully. “Not until we catch your Spider.” Then they can figure the rest out.

Rather than taking it too hard, a bright thought occurs to Richie. “Could I see you at your place?”

If only. To smooth the disappointment, Eddie pets Richie’s fluffy hair and nests a kiss at the top of his head. “I’m living with my mother while Dad’s working in Washington,” he explains. “I’m at my office for everything but sleeping and showering, though. If I’m awake, I’ll get your call. Otherwise, I have an answering service.”

“Eh. Alright, handsome.” Richie kisses him. “I’ll start thinking up a real humdinger of a joke in case I have to leave a message.” He kisses Eddie one more time before slipping out of bed for good.

  
-

  
Since she has the radio on, Eddie makes it into Mother’s house, into the kitchen, and half way through a leftover meatloaf sandwich before she finally hears him. She shrieks with a resonance to rival the baroque strings of her music.

“Eddie! Eddie you come in here _right now!"_

He pokes one last morsel into his mouth before he gets up to go face her, and she keeps on like that until he arrives.

"-I've been worried sick about you, you could have been dead in a gutter, and I'd never know! Is that what you want-"

She rocks by the radio with her knitting poised in her lap like some kind of needled sea creature, with wet eyes to match. How she could whip up tears so quick, he never knew, but at least he was old enough now to know them for the tactic they were.

“Yes, Mother?” he says, as evenly as he can. “Would you like me to bring you dinner from the kitchen?”

“Where have you been!? All night you were gone, Eddie!”

He knows better than to lie and say he was at the office. She’ll have called and found out he wasn’t there. Fortunately, he has plenty of cases he can claim to be working.

“I’m sorry. I’m still getting used to losing my secretary, or else I would have had Myra call you. Wanamaker’s offered me double my rate to figure out who’s selling phony sugar books out of their cosmetics counter.”

That gives Mother quite a few inflammatory paths to veer onto. She’s a brand loyalist, for one- this is a low blow for the integrity of her favorite department store. On the other hand, she disliked Myra- any mention of her is an exciting opportunity to rail against a perceived tramp. Last but not least, she despises cleverness and cheats. Still, she surprises Eddie with her choice in fixation.

“Cosmetics!” she fumes.

“Yeah. I had to go through hundreds of boxes and put them all back before the store opened in the morning. It took hours.”

It really had! _Last week..._

“No wonder you stink of cologne.”

Eddie’s blood runs cold. “I hadn’t noticed...”

Without warning, Mother lunges in her seat, toppling her knitting from her lap. It takes her a bit of rocking to fully make it, but as soon as she does, she’s pushing Eddie out of the room, into the hallway. Despite how worried she claims to be for his well being, she rushes him too near the telephone table and he shins the corner painfully.

"Now, hold on-"

“You get into that bathroom, Eddie, and you scrub that off! You’ll give yourself an attack from the fumes! Your _lungs,_ Eddie!”

If only she knew the workout they’d already lived through today, her hair would turn green. He puts up with her shoving him around, buoyed by the thought.

“Yes, Mother... What a good idea... Hygiene is so important...” She stands around in the bathroom door expectantly rather than leave him to it, so Eddie sits at the edge of the tub to dutifully untie his shoes.

“I’ll turn down your bed for after. You must be exhausted! You didn’t sleep all night! Anyone would think you’re trying to kill yourself, pushing like this-”

He can't very well tell her he slept on a strange couch or napped in another man’s arms, so he forces a yawn. At least it's an out from the conversation. “You’re right Mother, I’m dog tired. I’ll go straight to bed.” 

There are a few phone books stashed in his room he can cross reference with Richie’s lists, anyway. He can slip back out to the office in a few hours.

  
-

  
Maybe it’s an over-correction avoiding the Capitol all together over the next few weeks of their affair, but if it protects Richie from the suspicion that he’s hired a gumshoe, it’s for the best. Eddie chases up every name he can on Richie’s list- some dead ends, some just dead- while Richie feeds him the information from any new letters. Unable to meet openly, they make do with long, furtive calls in the middle of the night. Occasionally they can arrange a rendezvous at a hotel, but mostly it breaks Eddie’s heart every time they hang up without knowing when they’ll see each other again. Why should everyone else in New York get to wander into the Capitol and stare at him and yet not really see him? Night after night, there are people who get to hear Richie’s laugh in person, and they only hear Big Mouth.

That makes it all the more troubling when Richie calls him out of the blue early one evening. Eddie can hear the commotion of the club in the background. Stan, Richie’s pianist, noodling around the keys, glasses clinking, the murmur of a crowd. It all sounds so pleasant, in sharp relief with the fearful edge to Richie’s voice. _Why can’t anyone else hear this?_

“Eds, I need to see you,” is all he can say before someone backstage squawks that it’s nearly dinner. “I heard ya the _first time_!”

“Richie, what’s wrong?” Eddie clutches his receiver.

“I read a good book.” That’s their code for a new letter. _It’s about a salesman named Marks, you’d like it._ Richie hesitates, drawing a sharp breath. “But I can’t tell you about it, you’ll have to borrow it for yourself.”

Eddie’s stomach can’t decide whether to sink because this is out of the ordinary, or burst with butterflies because this is an offer to meet _tonight_. “Can you bring it to my office?” he asks, breathless.

“After work. But it’ll be late.”

“That’s all right, kid. I’ll leave the light on for ya.”

After a few hours of waiting and failing to get some work done in the meanwhile, Eddie decides to save Richie the shoe leather and meet him down at the club, after all. He’ll make the most of it. It’s been slow going working Richie’s case from the side of the victims, maybe it’s finally time to try narrowing things down from the other direction. Just who is their nefarious perpetrator? Someone who knows about Big Mouth’s skill, firstly- _so_ everyone who steps foot in the club- that’s not rocket science. Then who knows he talked to the police? Presumably anyone who was around the night Richie was arrested. Who might they have tipped off? Once he’s answered a few of these questions, Eddie’ll get a good look around and then find some place quiet to duck his head with Richie. He’s wary of continuing to eat into Richie’s nest egg, but Eddie could afford a room himself, if Richie’s willing to sit through a cab ride to a cheaper part of town. No matter what, he’s going to end the night in Richie’s arms. Whatever the other unknowns, he steps into The Capitol Club sure of that, at least.

Tonight the crowd is being treated to one of Richie’s French numbers. No funny pinched nose or squeaky voice. Just a handsome man in a dazzling white dinner jacket and a pretty song winding through the air like the smoke of many a cigarette, curlicuing to the ceiling.

 _C'est si bon de se dire des mots doux  
_ _Des petits rien du tout  
_ _Mais qui en disent long_

It’s odd to see Richie without his glasses again, as he had for years until recently. His Richie- the Richie that tells Eddie dreadful, filthy jokes and then kisses him so sweetly that no one could believe the same mouth had done both things- his Richie wears glasses. And he can’t stand to keep his collar buttoned, let alone wear a bowtie. It’s strange to think in the same way that there was a secret Richie hidden in plain sight- someone else here might have a secret identity. Unfortunately, it’s not such a charming one.

Eddie gets himself a drink and stands at the end of the bar closest to the stage, thinking he’ll take advantage of the light to survey the crowd. That’s not how it winds up, of course. He spots one or two particularly crafty looking women watching Richie intently that he _could_ strike up some investigative conversation with- but instead he falls to their same fate.

 _C'est si bon quand j'le tiens dans ses bras  
_ _De me dire que tout a  
_ _C'est moi pour de bon_

He should ask Richie what that means, _or he should pay attention to why he came here_ , but he’s under Richie’s infuriatingly distracting spell. It was kind of stupid to think coming to the club would go any differently.

When Richie’s number is done, Eddie knocks on the edge of Stan’s piano.

“Point me out to Rich, will ya?”

Stan cranes around the corner of his piano and gives him a nod. “Hey, Richie,” he motions. 

They whisper back and forth to each other.

“You’re too kind,” Richie acknowledges the lingering applause. “In fact, you’re _every_ kind, aren’t you. All sorts and scoundrels here, tonight.” He scans across the crowd and grins in Eddie’s direction particularly. Stan launches into another melody that’s not so much underscoring for a vocalist as its own feature. “Ladies and gentlemen, Stanley Uris,” Richie introduces, before bowing away through the curtains at the back of the stage.

Before long, he reappears, his white jacket glowing through the shadowy corner where the backstage door opens to the main floor of the club. As he weaves through the cafe tables filled with candles and customers towards Eddie, he pulls his glasses out of his pocket and puts them on.

“Where’d you learn to sing like that?” Eddie asks as he draws close.

“I took a correspondence course,” Richie grins, meeting him at the bar. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.” He can’t kiss him hello here, but Richie slides an arm around his shoulder almost as tenderly.

“Hey, Rich,” Eddie beams back. He has a hard time mastering his expression into something less gaga, until Richie gives him a fake sock in the jaw. Fake or not, Richie’s got big boney hands, so it still smarts. “What’s the big idea!?”

“That’s for lying to me, you little weasel.”

“No?” Eddie protests, rubbing his face. He always shoots straight with Richie. He’s more honest with him than he’s ever been with anyone. They finally have each other and there’s no need to hold back, at least when they’re alone.

“Not that I’m not glad to see ya, but you _said_ you’d wait for me at your office.”

“I knew I was gonna see you and I couldn’t wait.”

Richie straightens back up and leans against the bar, smirking. “Head over heels, eh?”

“Richie...” Eddie’s eyes dart around, from Richie, to the table nearest, the bartender, and back again. “I was worried. About the letter.”

The look on Richie’s face freezes unnaturally. “Eddie...” he says, with so much regret in his tone, so jarring when paired with the fixed smile, Eddie could drop dead. “The letter... was to call _you_. I found it on my way to the club tonight, I- I-,” he pauses and looks around, then steps a little closer to Eddie to whisper. “I don’t know how much The Spider knows.”

Eddie fights the urge to take Richie’s hand, so close to his on the surface of the bar. “What did it say? Word for word.”

Richie leans closer still, as there can be no risk of miscommunication, not now. Eddie’s heart races, traveling up his throat and threatening to pop his Adam's apple right out ahead of it.

“‘Tell Mr. Kaspbrak if he doesn’t drop Big Mouth, I will,’” Richie whispers. He lets his cheek brush Eddie’s as he pulls away again.

“Richie...”

“I’m not scared,” Richie says, defiantly.

"You are.” Eddie is! But it’s okay. They can be scared together. His eyebrows pinch as he tries broadcasting this to Richie.

“Fine, I am. I’m-” Richie huffs. He’s clearly a little angry, too. The two so often go hand in hand in times of powerlessness. “You shouldn't have come here, Eds!” he says. “You should have let me come to you.”

“It’ll be fine,” Eddie says automatically. “It doesn't _sound_ like they know how close we are. Right? ‘ _Drop Big Mouth_ ’?” Eddie searches Richie for any sign of his infectious optimism, and failing that, somehow becomes overwhelmed with it himself. “If they _knew_ they could do so much better than that!”

_Tell your lover, if he doesn’t drop your case, I’ll kill you in front of him._

Richie considers this for a moment, searching the crowd, then looks back to Eddie. “What do we do?”

“We can go somewhere tonight,” Eddie says, falling back on his earlier plan. “A hotel. We’ll figure it out there. Hell, if it comes to it, we’ll get out of New York.”

Richie blinks rapidly, a flurry behind the magnifying effect of his glasses. “What are you saying?”

Eddie glances at the bartender and the nearby crowd again, and leans in. “Forget all this. Run away with me. I could work in Washington for my father, and I’m sure you could find a dance hall at one of the bases down there. We could start over.”

There’s always a light in Richie, that what makes him _so beautiful_ , but now he practically ignites. It’s a wonder everyone in the club doesn’t stop and turn to look at them, this shining, newborn star, Richie’s brilliant hope that they could have a life together.

“Eds,” he says, voice choked like he’s on the verge of tears. “When?”  
  
“Now.” Eddie skids his hand across the bar top to nudge Richie’s.

Richie shakes himself to sense. “I- I can’t just leave Stan high and dry, he’ll start playing Dvořák and get booed off the stage and he won’t get paid for the week- he’s got a wife and kid!”

Eddie muffles a laugh with one hand. “Can you just finish the night, then? He can get a cover tomorrow, can’t he? Might even be someone who can carry a tune, and they'll give him a raise.”

“Okay, okay,” Richie laughs too. “Just a-” he peels away and passes Eddie to go lean at the edge of the stage and say something to Stan. _Play another song after this,_ if Eddie has to guess, by the shape of Richie’s mouth. He circles back to Eddie, “Okay. Just two more hours here. After my next number I’ll call Bill and tell him to pack a bag for me and-” he pauses. “Where should he send it?”

“-Send it to the Dorset on 22nd,” Eddie supplies. He waves his hand at his own concerns. “I can get my mother to send me things once we’re in Washington.”

Richie grins from ear to ear. “Okay. Eds-”

“-It’ll be okay Richie.”

One of the Capitol’s waitresses breezes by, and Richie flags her down with one hand and dips into his jacket with the other. “Nellie, give me a light!”

A celebratory cigarette, then.

Nellie stops in her tracks, but doesn’t yet reach into the bulging pockets of her apron. “That’s not my name. Give yourself a light.”

“I can’t, you took my matches last night!” Richie dangles a cigarette from his mouth with a pitiful frown. “Nellie...”

She sighs and checks her pockets, then strikes a match for Richie, and shakes it out when he’s done. “What about you?” Nellie asks Eddie, offering the matchbook and a more hospitable smile than she ever gave Richie.

“What’s your name?” Eddie asks back.

“Penelope. It’s Penny, not Nellie.”

“Penny. Let me apologize for my friend’s poor manners,” he says, offering her some change as a tip for the light. “I know what a putz Big Mouth here can be with the ladies.”

She pockets his coin. “Don’t I know it.”

Eddie looks down the bar. “Is there anyone else I should be treating while I’m at it?”

Penny looks around and narrows her eyes at a woman with piles of strawberry curls poised atop her head. “Him and his friend are always pestering Miss Phillips.”

“Thank you.” Eddie hands her another few bits. “One for Miss Phillips then.”

“Nothing for you? No light?” she checks before leaving to fill the order. She holds up the book of matches again.

 _Edward Kaspbrak - Private Detective  
_ _46th Street between 9th and 10th  
_ _New York_

Eddie bites his mouth shut quickly then opens it again. “No. Thank you. I was just leaving.”

Sirens are going off in his head. He and Richie have been carrying on discreetly for weeks, but she took his matches _last night_. She saw that Richie was in touch with a detective. Within a day, Richie had a threatening letter, connecting the two of them.

“Ah-” he tries, to Richie.

But Stan is winding down, again, by the sound of this song. Behind Penny, Richie steps away from the bar. He waves a hand at Eddie and mouths something he can’t possibly process on top of everything else, and then disappears into the crowd.

“Good night,” Eddie blurts, whether or not Penny is still paying attention to him. He plucks his hat off the bar and ducks away in the opposite direction of Richie, like he really is leaving.

His instinct that this is wrong, that he should stay and protect Richie rushes with blood to his ears like a scream. His palms sweat, and he drops his hat to the floor of the club, accidentally kicking it under a table with his clumsy step as he flails to catch it. It doesn’t matter. Leave it. _Don’t leave Richie._ Eddie keeps moving. _I’m never going to_ , he tries to tell his racing heart. He just needs Penny to believe he’s leaving.

He doesn’t look back until he reaches the entrance, and then he ducks behind a woman taking off her lush coat, shucks his own, and trades it with the coat of her husband on the disinterested arm of the maître d'. Eddie dodges away and then shrugs the borrowed coat on, several shades darker. Perfect.

He spots the stage door Richie had appeared from earlier on the other side of the club from the bar. He wades his way toward it, trying to blend in. Trying not to look like he's panicking inside. When he finally gets to the door he squares himself authoritatively to pass through. No one tries to stop him, and if even they did, Eddie wouldn’t let them. He needs to get Richie out of here, immediately.

The door is unlocked, but it’s pitch black when he shuts himself on the other side. Richie must make his way through here by memory, half-blind as he is. Eddie gropes along in the dark, but the route is winding and warren-like, with boxes stacked unpredictably on either side jutting into the path. He stumbles through until he sees a haze of light coming around a corner up ahead. The music from the stage is getting louder again. Richie is doing his singing Dracula bit, and it’s a hit. When he turns the next corner he can see the narrow backstage proper. The backside of the curtains he’s seen from out front make one wall, while a row of office doors and dressing rooms and prop storage make up the other. 

This is the only way Richie will think to leave the stage- and he’ll be wanting to use the office phone to call Bill. It’s fine. As long as Penny doesn’t want a hundred witnesses, Eddie will be between him and danger.

Careful to keep from view, he sneaks up close to the sliver of light between hanging curtains. Richie is using one of the Capitol Clubs maroon tablecloths as a vampiric cape, arm clawed in that iconic pose as he sings. Eddie only means to keep an eye on him, but instead he falls in love all over again.

 _Vunny, each time I vall in love  
_ _It's alvays you!_

“You should have left, Mr. Kaspbrak,” he hears, between verses.

He turns, but the wrong way. A pitcher of water waiting for Richie’s break smashes to the ground, splashing his shins. The light spilling in from the stage glints on the blade of a knife and disappears again in the dark. An elbow catches him in the gut. He can’t _see_ back here like the people used to working backstage, he can only feel a sudden, sniping pain at the center of his chest. It’s unlike the familiar pain of illness- the kind that dulls- _this_ pain sets all his senses on high alert. He throws off the arm trying to grasp him, and when he sees the flash of the knife again, he dives for it. He catches Penny by the wrist and tackles them both down to the ground, driving her blade with them. It won’t catch the light again, buried in her chest.

Eddie rolls away, scrambling through a wet puddle.

“Oh God.”

Blood? His own blood? He was wounded, he was _stabbed!_ Is he dying?

_Please, not before he can kiss Richie goodbye._

Eddie raises his hands to his face in what little light there is, and-

“Hey, who’s screwin’ around back here?” Richie comes storming through the curtain.

“I broke your water pitcher,” Eddie exhales. A wave of relief crashes through him. He pants, sucking in air in great heaving gulps because he’s _alive._

“Eddie!” Instantly, Richie is on his knees at Eddie’s side, squinting at him, hands tugging so he can figure out just why he would be on the floor, honking like a vacuum at a time like this. “You’re _bleeding!”_

Eddie feels at his chest, fingers sliding in something sticky. He looks down. “Oh,” he says. There’s a scarlet slash in the front of his shirt. “That was, uh, that was Penny.”

“Penny?”

“The Spider,” Eddie huffs, still struggling to master his breathing. “She’s the one- I- I’m- I think I’m fine?” When he prods the wound again he hurts like any cut would, but mostly he’s fascinated. It looks like the blade came at him at an angle and bounced off his sternum, cutting only skin. Sure, there’s plenty of blood, the worst part of the gash as long as his thumb, but- “It doesn’t feel very deep?”

Richie fumbles his glasses on and starts at Eddie’s collar, unbuttoning his shirt to check for himself. “She stabbed you?! She stabbed you!” he rushes. “We should have just left right away Eds- I- I forgot! I totally- _I didn’t care._ She came on to me years ago and I turned her down and I didn’t even _think-”_

“Oww!” Eddie jumps when Richie’s touch falls too close. “Shh, hey, cut it out,” he tells Richie, batting his hands away and shoving himself to his knees. His head is clearing now and he’s nearly got his breath back. “Help me up. C’mon. We have to figure out what to-”

“Can you move? Eds-“ 

No sooner does Richie get Eddie on his feet, he tries to hug him, but Eddie stops him with an elbow before his bloody front can marr Richie’s white jacket.

“No, no, Richie- you’ll have to get back out there.”

“What!?” Richie brow turns thunderous.

“On stage, all night, same as usual. Everything has to be as normal as we can make it,” Eddie starts to explain. His brain is firing on all cylinders now. “Is there a wardrobe on wheels back here, maybe? Something- not _too_ big. We’ll have to get the body out of here.”

“The body,” Richie glances, lips curling in a frown.

“Richie, listen!” Eddie hisses. “The cops already have a recipe picked to cook your goose, and now someone turns up dead at your club? Even if I turned myself in to protect you and said _I did it-_ they’d find your case in my office, and checks for hotels in your apartment, and-”

If someone with half a brain wanted to figure out a connection between them, they could. There’s no chance the authorities would look at this like self defense- like anything other than two degenerates committing yet another heinous offense. Such a bright young woman, cut down by their sick, perverted jealousy.

Richie must realize that too, or else he wouldn’t have avoided seeking help for so long.

He doesn’t try to pull Eddie too close again, but he takes hold of his arms urgently, eyes wild. “I get it, Eddie, I get it. If we go down, we go down together.”

 _No_. Not this time. Eddie shakes his head. “We don’t have to,” he tells Richie. “Just do what I say.”

Before sending Richie back out to complete the evening’s entertainment, Eddie has him help move Penny into the dressing room and point out a trunk and Stan’s piano dolly. While Richie’s performing he takes everything identifiable out of her pockets and seals her inside. Richie’s apartment is close enough to the Hudson River, after the club closes they can get a cab there- nothing so unusual about that. Then they’ll only have to dolly the trunk a block away. Richie can pack and leave a letter to Bill, and then if anyone comes wondering why two staff from the Capitol have disappeared on the same night, it will all make perfect sense. Big Mouth and the waitress have eloped.

  
-

  
Eddie’s shirt lays over the radiator in the hotel bathroom to dry, crisping the air with a slight metallic smell. He was able to rinse most of the blood out, but it’s dingy now and with the tear in the front, he’ll have to relegate it to the rag man. He can borrow one of Richie’s and look presentable enough for their train ride tomorrow.

Slowly the red V cut into the center of his chest disappears as he salves and bandages the wound in the mirror. While he patches himself with the Capitol’s filched first aid kit, Richie uses his matchbook to burn what papers Penny had and douse them in the bathtub. It’s not so unlike when Richie has watched him shave while enjoying a bath during other hotel stays, but it is quieter, Eddie notices. Richie isn’t teasing him, or humming to himself as he trails his fingers through the sloshing water. He’s oddly silent. He’s been tongue-tied most of the night.

“Richie... I’m sorry,” Eddie tries. “If she, you know- _aside from the blackmail-_ if she was a friend of yours.”

They worked at the club together for years. It can be complicated to be close with someone who hurts you- Eddie should know from his own relationship with his mother. He _loves_ her, but he’s fed up, and he just can’t let her keep her claws in him, anymore.

Richie snorts. _“What!?”_

“A woman is-!” Eddie stops himself shouting and ends in a whisper. _“-dead.”_

The most puzzled expression contorts Richie’s face, as though Eddie has just declared his intention to glue a pair of candelabras to his head and live as a moose from now on. “A woman who tried to kill you,” Richie says, certainly. “And would have killed me, and _definitely_ killed that gambler and God knows how many other people!”

“Well, _pardon me_ -” Eddie says, a defensive hand flying up. “You were being too quiet, it was giving me the willies. I didn’t know if maybe you were upset about it...”

“I’m not upset about it!” Richie tosses the burning corner of an unsent Big Mouth letter into the tub.

Eddie dabs the shallowest corner of his wound, wincing and muttering. “You’re upset about _something,_ or else you’d be- I don’t know- singing ‘Paper Moon’.”

“I don’t _feel_ like singing,” Richie bites.

Well, obviously.

Eddie lets him cool off for a few minutes and continues tending himself. More salve. One last big bandage to keep the bleeding at bay now the edges are under control. Wiping away an errant dribble of water with a towel. Putting the towel back on the rack and in doing so glancing at Richie, who sits at the edge of the tub looking shell shocked.

His face is drawn longer than usual, with his jaw hung open instead of fixed in a customary wide grin. He took off his jacket when they got here but he still hasn’t undone his bow-tie.

“I thought you’d be happy, is all,” he tells Richie quietly. “We can be together now.”

“Eddie.” Richie’s voice sounds small as a mouse. “I am happy, I just-” He pushes himself up from his seat and comes over to him, hand falling lightly at his waist. Hesitant. He looks into the mirror over Eddie’s shoulder. “You almost- I thought maybe...”

Eddie sees the tears welling in his eyes in the reflection. “Richie?”

He turns to face him, winding an arm around his neck and bringing him in. Richie catches tight around his waist and gasps a sob into his neck. He nuzzles his nose there and presses sniffling kisses to him from ear to shoulder cap.

“I didn’t know you wouldn’t be _gone_ when I finished on stage,” he weeps. “You could’ve went and turned yourself in after all, or, or you coulda been hurt worse than you were admitting and _died_ , and, and _I had to keep fucking suh-singing for two hours!”_

“Sweetheart...”

Eddie wraps Richie in close, shushing him and smearing kiss after kiss at his temple. He hadn’t realized- he’d been the one with the plan. He had more control over what he was doing, and he knew for sure Richie was safe while he was doing it. Meanwhile, Richie had been scared out of his mind for hours, dragged along for the ride.

“You wouldn’t even let me _hold you-“_

 _Oh._ That’s true. He didn’t want to send Richie on stage covered in blood- that wouldn’t do. He’d had to lift a black scarf from the Capitol’s dressing room to disguise his wound during their cab ride, himself.

Eddie squeezes Richie extra tight, even if it smarts his chest a little. “I’m so sorry. Hold me now,” he says. “I’m right here. We’re safe. We’re gonna get out of here tomorrow, and we’ll figure it all out. We’ll find someplace where you can sing and do your voices- _only if you want to,_ and a home, and hold each other every night.”

Richie pulls his face out of its burrow at Eddie's neck and noses up along his jaw until he finds his lips with his own again. Eddie kisses back, slow and open. He’s so sorry. He should have let Richie kiss him, at least. That was his first instinct when he thought he might die, after all.

He lets Richie push him back into the sink and have his full. They murmur _I love yous_ too muddled to really be words into each other's mouths, _I don’t know what I’d do without yous_ too terrible to bear thought.

With nowhere to go between Richie’s pushy body and the sink, Eddie ruts against him. Richie just pushes harder, plumbs his mouth deeper. Their tongues flick and slide together, and their two mouths moan as one. When they accidentally turn the cold water tap in their clamber, Richie pulls back, breathing heavy but no longer weighed down by his heartache. He rights his glasses, gone crooked, and _really_ looks at Eddie- bright and exhilarated like it’s the first time he’s getting to look at him in years.

“I’m gonna _buy you a house,_ Eddie. Forget the club. That’s what I really wanted it to be, anyway- my home base where I could sing what I like and kiss who I like-“

“Mmm, _kiss me,_ ” Eddie agrees, because Richie is already doing so, again. “Make a home with me.” Eddie wants nothing more than to have a place where he can love Richie without reserve. He’ll come home to him and they’ll share their meals and a bed and laughter and he’ll _never_ stop Richie from holding him, there.

Richie hums and breaks away, hands smoothing up the sides of Eddie’s bare chest. He squints at the bandaging. “Are you done with your- is it _really_ okay?”

 _“Eh,_ rub some dirt on it and walk it off,” Eddie grins.

“Yeah, I’ll rub somethin’ on it, alright..."

“Maybe not _that.”_

Richie laughs. “Have it your way. Just take me to bed.”

 _"Both_ beds,” Eddie nods and kisses him. They’re got a double room, after all. “And the chair. And the rug.”

He pries Richie’s bow tie off before they make it out of the bathroom and has his shirt off, too, before his back hits the bed.

“No, wait, pull down the covers,” Eddie gripes. He wrestles the top edge of the blanket from its tuck under the pillows and shimmys it under Richie’s squirming body. 

Richie kicks both it and his trousers down, making the fruit pattern tumble down like from an overripe tree. “What? You don’t wanna get a woody every time you eat a pear ‘cause you’re thinking about fucking me?”

Eddie’s mouth squirms into a smile. “Other way ‘round, I don’t want to get hungry for pears every time I fuck you,” he growls. “They’re not always in season.”

While Eddie finishes undressing, Richie rolls onto his stomach and peers back over his shoulder at him. “I’ve got a _pair_ for you.”

“Bozo.” Eddie gives one of his pert cheeks a light smack. “Where’s your suitcase?”

Richie points to the valet across the room. He snuggles into a loose pillow while he waits for him to come back and chuckles. “Hurry up while I’m still ripe.”

All laid out for him, with his long legs and feet dangling off the end of the bed, Richie looks like Eddie’s own personal acre of heaven. He could put up a mailbox and a bird bath live in him. He _will_ live with him, and have all that homey stuff.

“Move over, love lump.” He nudges Richie onto his side and curls up laid behind him so he can save his knees for the boot knocking. The hair at the back of Richie's neck stands on end, prickling Eddie’s forehead as he dips his fingers into their jar of slick. He blows a little cool air down his spine to really give him the goosebumps.

Richie ripples against him and lets out a little whine. “Eds-”

“I know,” Eddie kisses his back and relishes in the heat of him, tracing the cleft of his rear end and pushing in when he finds his hole. “You tell me when you’re ready for two.”

_“Now.”_

Always gassed up and raring to go, that Richie.

“Suits me fine,” Eddie circles the pads of two fingers at Richie until the muscle is coaxed to let them in, then presses deep. “I can’t wait to be inside of you. How do you want it? Do you want me to rattle the bricks with you? Make the whole building come down and fuck you in the rubble?”

Richie shudders. “That sounds pretty good, King Kong- but what else you got?”

Eddie chuckles. When he’s with Richie he feels strong enough to rip apart the whole New York skyline, all right, nevermind the woe he could do to a lousy little fleabag like this.

“Hmm. We could do it real business-like,” he offers.

“You want me to put my tie back on?”

“That'd be more professional.”

“You could dip your pen in my inkwell, and then give me a handshake.”

Eddie grins and rubs himself into the back of Richie’s legs. “Exactly. And everyone- _mmm-_ gets off for the weekend.”

Richie giggles. He’s moving easy on Eddie’s fingers now. They’re getting so good at loosening each other up and anticipating and fulfilling each other. Eddie’s not surprised at all when Richie asks him for another.

“Another option, or another finger?” he teases.

“Both."

“I know what you want, Rich.” He’s known from the start.

 _“Ohh,”_ Richie moans and melts as he fits more of him.

Eddie kisses Richie’s back and licks the salt of his sweat off his lips. He loves the taste of Richie’s joy even more than he appreciates being happy himself. “You want me to make love to you-”

“Hnn, _yes.”_

“-Tell you I’m yours forever and I’d do anything for you.”

“You would, you would, _I’m ready,_ please-”

“Roll over, sweetheart.”

Richie pulls away from Eddie, making a distraught noise as his fingers slip out. He flops to his back in a jumble of pale, pliant limbs. Though, now that he’s facing Eddie again, he’s reminded of his injury. Without a word, he reaches to touch his chest nearby. He cares without coddling, which Eddie loves him for, but after the scare they just went through he oughta throw him a bone.

“Aspirin’s kicking in,” Eddie tells him. “I’ll change the dressing in the middle of the night.”

“Good. Wake me up.” Richie smiles and lays back while Eddie finds that jar again and coats himself.

With his lover ready and his body aching to be with him, Eddie can’t help but be agreeable. “Of course.” He heaves himself up onto his knees and shuffles his way between Richie’s legs. Those lovely things. He bends them just so and runs a hand along one thigh. “You want me to come take you a second time, don’t you?”

Richie grins. “Bravo, detective. You figured it out.”

“Insatiable.”

“I prefer ‘enthusiastic’.”

Eddie leans over for a moment to kiss Richie. “I’m just happy you prefer me.”

It strains across Eddie’s chest to put his weight onto his arms, of course, but that’s all right. He sits back again and lines himself up with Richie, open and waiting, and the relief of finally being inside him is the perfect distraction. They were made to be part of each other, to fit together like this and give each other peace. As he sinks into Richie, inch by inch, he knows he’s filling him not only with himself, but reassurance. He’s alive, here with Richie. _Safe_. They still have each other, even as they leave everything else behind. As ever, Richie watches him as closely as he can, no matter how his eyes flutter at the onrush of sensation.

“How’s that feel?”

“Like you just docked a U-Boat, _Jesus.”_

Eddie sighs. “That's your own fault. You rushed me.”  
  
 _"You’ll thank me later.”_

Probably.

Eddie lowers himself on top of Richie and starts moving, nice and easy. “You feel incredible,” he kisses to him. “Just perfect.”

“You’re bigger, _I swear_ you're bigger, wuh _-uh-_ t did you do?” Richie jerks beneath him. He arches his back and puts his arms over his head like a swimmer seeking the surface of the water and gasps at another thrust.

“I’m- _ah-_ just so full of love for you. Love you so much.”

_So much, so much._

If there’s a sound a cartoon tulip would make as it fell over in a swoon, Richie makes it. “Gimme all that love.”

“S’already yours,” Eddie promises.

The late hour of Richie’s cheek rasps at his nose as Eddie plants enough kisses there for a botanic garden. Before long, Richie turns his head into it, kissing him back and licking his way into Eddie’s mouth. He swipes the back of his front teeth and giggles to himself.

Eddie finds himself rumbling with a laugh too, though he has no idea why. He just can’t help but catch whatever happy bug Richie gets.

“What?” He grins.

“M’just thinking how jealous Lauren Bacall should be... You're so handsome. N’ brave... So, _mmhuhn,_ good to me.” Richie’s hands come to rest at the back of Eddie’s neck. He holds tight there, making little _uhn_ noises in Eddie’s ear for every roll of his hips. He gets louder and louder as his anticipation builds.

“Shhh, love,” Eddie reminds him. They can’t go waking the hotel. Richie seals his mouth to Eddie's flesh, seals every inch that he can to his body to muffle his cries. “Just for me. You’re just for me to- _oh. Oh!”_

The pitch of Richie’s passage changes as he wraps his legs around Eddie, now _he’s_ the one could sing loud enough to fill a stadium without a microphone. The squeeze on him is perfect if they can just stay right here.

“Richie, love-“

“Uhhuh!“

The bed creaks and his arms burn as he picks up the pace. Beneath him, Richie shakes like a leaf. He drops his head back, revealing a furiously bobbing throat and clenched eyes. The curls atop his head quake against the pillow. He’ll finish any moment.

“That’s right. You’re mine. My love,” Eddie grunts, incapable of longer multi-worded sentiments. He drops from his elbows to blanket Richie entirely. _Cover him, fill him,_ but never really contain him- he wouldn’t want to. 

Richie yelps and puffs. _“Ah,_ Eddie, _ah, ah, ahhh...”_ He comes like he laughs, full bodied and irrepressible.

“Yeah,” Eddie gulps. “Right behind you...”

Though his arms fall away, Richie keeps his ankles locked at Eddie’s hip, willing him on. “Keep- keep going,” he breathes. “Keep loving me.”

Absolutely.

Eddie dips, quick and shallow, savoring the fucked and fluttering feel of him, _miraculously good-_ and then drives in deep to release.

“Oh, oh God, oh Rich,” he pants. His nerves tighten and snap, flooding light behind his eyes.

He opens them again to Richie- red faced with a curl plastered right down the middle of his forehead. He trembles, overwrought from both their orgasms, but he grins, too.

“You didn’t keel over.”

Eddie chuckles and wipes his forearm at his own sweaty face. “No,” he agrees, winded. “Couldn’t. Then who’d look after you?”

Richie visibly searches his addled brain for a joke, squinting one eye. “Maybe Dracula will pick up some of the slack.”

“You see that creep, you tell him to keep his fangs to himself,” Eddie smirks.

He kisses Richie once with a possessive bite, then mushes several more. He stays inside of him, kissing as they both soften.

“D’you want me to fix up the bath for you?” he asks Richie when it’s time to wash up.

“If you’ll come join me.”

Eddie kisses his nose, yes. He could use a little heat on his old bones before their journey tomorrow morning- nearly today.

Though it’s a real wrench, he gets out of bed and ambles off to the bathroom. The light in here never got turned as they tumbled into bed, so Eddie is greeted by his bright reflection, smiling dopily. He turns on the hot water in the tub to fill it a bit more, then pulls out the burnt tatters of Big Mouth letters that will never be sent. Hopefully all those people with their secrets, many of them tragic, can be as free as he and Richie now.

When the water is right, Eddie sinks into the tub. Soon enough, Richie comes to join him for a moonlit bath, to wash them clean of this whole dirty ordeal.

  
-

  
The train to Union Station is bustling. They’re lucky to manage two seats when the get on, let alone two seats sitting opposite from each other. There are scads of servicemen, of course, so eventually Richie gives up his seat and hangs from the bar in front of Eddie. He’s not having the best day with his legs, but it’s made better by Richie knocking their knees together and pulling faces when their fellow passengers aren’t looking. He pretends to be a Frenchman when a doddering bookkeeper from Dover asks them where they're from, what they do for a living, and Eddie plays the part of translator.

Of course, it turns out the only French Richie speaks he’s learned by ear from music.

“How do you like New York?” the bookkeeper asks.

“C'est si bon de partir n'importe ou, bras dessus bras dessous!”

Eddie clears his throat. “He says- it’s a great city to meet pretty women.”

Richie nearly trips and falls into his lap laughing.

The bookkeeper gets off in Baltimore, and they continue on to the capitol. Patches of city and countryside speed by outside the window. Big factories and apartment blocks, smokestacks and steeples. Little houses tucked away in picturesque stretches of wood. Maybe when they get off in Washington, they’ll settle somewhere like that. Maybe they’ll get another pair of tickets and head out to St. Louis and see the Mississippi- or even go all the way to California. Richie could try his hand at Hollywood, and they could share a little palm-treed plot somewhere.

Wherever they wind up, they'll make it home and Eddie will be sure to keep their noses clean.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm @stitchyarts on tumblr and twitter, come check out mooooore reddie art <3


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